Conflict in South Sudan Taking Lessons from American Tea Party

The United States is the largest, wealthiest, best educated and oldest democracy in the modern world.  And yet when a substantial majority of the American public elects an African-American president, not once but twice, all hell breaks out.  A tribal movement emerges among white males and attaches itself to the opposition party. This confederacy attempts to shut down the United States government, wreck its credit rating and precipitate a world wide recession.  The group also claims that both elections were rigged, that the black man in the White House is a Kenyan imposter and that he has ties to Muslim terrorists.  Its efforts at voter suppression in minority neighborhoods are so pervasive, that the movement's leaders refuse to believe that the black president actually won a second term in office.  Weapons are stockpiled. Open-carry rallies are organized to intimidate local police forces, and the Secret Service reports uncovering more conspiracies and threats to the life of  this African-American president, than to all of the previous white presidents combined.

South Sudan militia

If democracy turns out to be so fragile in a nation as steeped in democratic traditions as ours, why should we expect better in an impoverished African country, formed less than three years ago. The South Sudan is today embroiled in deadly clan politics, precipitated by a power struggle between the President, who belongs to the Dinka ethnic group and his ex-deputy, a member of another group called the "Nuer."  The U.S. has been forced to airlift its citizens from the capital city, Juba.  The United Nations reports that at least five hundred people have died in ethnic clashes including two soldiers from the UN Peacekeeping Force. Observers are terrified that this conflict could degenerate into the kind of ethnic cleansing campaigns seen in Bosnia and Rwanda.

It is not clear what if anything the U.S. government can do to end this conflict.  But it is certain that the Tea Party and the Republican opposition to America's first black president, is an embarrassing reminder that the U.S. is not as far ahead of South Sudan as it would like the world to believe.